In flood-stricken India, Christians love the afflicted with more than words

By Marcus Rowntree*

INDIA–Disasters are blind in their cruelty.

When the worst floods in more than 100 years swept through a village in southern India, the water did not ask about the rich landowner’s social status before it washed away his soil, drowned his cattle and destroyed his house.

“For all these years, I was a landowner,” he said. “But from now on, I must go work in another man’s field.”

Brought low, like everyone else, he needed food so he would not starve.

Such was the sudden swiftness with which torrential rains turned the first week of October into a nightmare of overflowing rivers, flooded fields, and demolished houses. About 300 people lost their lives, and the flooding left at least 2 million homeless in the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

Thousands fled for safety with only the clothes on their backs as the floodwaters dissolved their mud dwellings. In his haste to escape death, one man even abandoned his mother.

“When the flood came, my son cared about his wife and children but left me in the house,” lamented the tearful old woman, who had not eaten for three days. “Now my son is away, and I do not know where he is. I am living alone.”

Pastor Joga Murthy,* who came with a team from the Indian Baptist Society to deliver desperately needed relief, listened to the woman’s heart-wrenching story and its grim assessment of human nature.

“Immediately we helped her with clothing and food so she could eat,” he said. “Everyone wanted to escape with their own lives, and they did not care about others in this situation.”

But the men from the Indian Baptist Society came to show that God — and His people — hurt for the suffering of others. With money provided by the Southern Baptist World Hunger Fund, the team purchased food, clothing and cooking pots, items that the villagers had lost in the flood.

To deliver aid where it was needed most, the team avoided the roadside encampments where thousands of families took shelter in tents. The government and larger relief organizations were already helping them. Instead, the team trekked into the heart of the flood-ravaged countryside, bringing help to isolated villages where ruined roads and washed out bridges made them extremely difficult to reach.

Team member Simeon Biswas* recalled pandemonium among starving villagers who had not even seen food for days.

“They were dragging the food,” he said. “We couldn’t give it peacefully. They were snatching the food from our hands. This was a very painful situation for us to see.”

That was not the worst of it. The poor farmers not only lost their immediate food supply, but the soil they depended on to grow their crops was completely washed away along with their seeds and livestock. Their homes gone, they slept on rocks or in the fields. Their children cried from hunger, so they sent them to live with relatives.

“Right now, they lost everything,” Murthy said.

His team was the first group to reach the villagers with aid.

“They were very hungry, so when we went, they loudly welcomed us and appreciated our work,” Murthy recalled. “If we were the fourth or fifth group to come, they wouldn’t have given that much response.”

When the team returned to the villages later to check on their progress and to ask about any continuing needs, the residents were shocked that someone cared for them so much.

“They said, ‘We saw so many people who came, gave food and went, but you came a second time and asked about our problems,’” Biswas recounted. “We could go, touch their hearts, and listen to them carefully.”

The men from the Indian Baptist Society carried the testimony that they love these poor and broken people not merely with words but with the visible truth of their actions.

Murthy recalled the simple yet powerful words spoken to him and his team.

“[The villagers] said, ‘Thank you, because when we were hungry and without food, you came to help us.’”